How the couple functions

Expectations and intimate territory

We first discover the fundamental expectations underlying conjugal commitment, often asymmetrical or silent, yet decisive. The couple is built as an intimate territory, whose cartography is as emotional as it is symbolic — with the six forms of intimacy that each relationship articulates in its own way: emotional, creative, everyday, intellectual, existential and sexual.

The essential dimensions of couple functioning

• The question of the couple’s boundaries, between openness to the world and protection of the bond.
• The role of functional myths in the identity construction of the duo.
• Money management as a revealer of power relations, values and solidarity.
• The capital importance of rituals, which can strengthen or reinvent the relationship at key moments of its life cycle.

This chapter also offers an exclusive deep dive: an original typology of conjugal rituals in three categories (ordinary, constitutive, performative), developed by Julien Besse and presented in the training “Rituals in the couple: Resources, Repairs and Reinventions”.

Two specific contexts

• Same-sex couples, who raise particular issues, notably around parenthood or the social gaze, but whose conjugal dynamics do not fundamentally differ.
• Blended couples, where loyalty conflicts, territorial issues and family entanglements demand an attentive and often differentiated systemic gaze.